Cimmeria (poem)

Cimmeria is a poem by Robert E. Howard about the fictional country Cimmeria, created by Howard as part of his Hyborian Age which is the setting for Conan. In the poem, it is described as "land of Darkness and deep Night", a gloomy place with dark woods, dusky silent streams and a leaden cloudy sky.

According to Howard, the poem was "Written in Mission, Texas, February 1932; suggested by the memory of the hill-country above Fredricksburg seen in a mist of winter rain". (The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, 2003).

The poem was first published in The Howard Collector (Winter 1965) and most recently published in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian (2003).

I rememberThe dark woods, masking slopes of sombre hills;The grey clouds' leaden everlasting arch;The dusky streams that flowed without a sound,And the lone winds that whispered down the passes.

Vista on vista marching, hills on hills,Slope beyond slope, each dark with sullen trees,Our gaunt land lay. So when a man climbed upA rugged peak and gazed, his shaded eyeSaw but the endless vista - hill on hill,Slope beyond slope, each hooded like its brothers.

It was a gloomy land that seemed to holdAll winds and clouds and dreams that shun the sun,With bare boughs rattling in the lonesome winds,And the dark woodlands brooding over all,Not even lightened by the rare dim sunWhich made squat shadows out of men; they called itCimmeria, land of Darkness and deep Night.

It was so long ago and far awayI have forgot the very name men called me.The axe and flint-tipped spear are like a dream,And hunts and wars are shadows. I recallOnly the stillness of that sombre land;The clouds that piled forever on the hills,The dimness of the everlasting woods.Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.

Oh, soul of mine, born out of shadowed hills,To clouds and winds and ghosts that shun the sun,How many deaths shall serve to break at lastThis heritage which wraps me in the greyApparel of ghosts? I search my heart and findCimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.